Image courtesy of Basecamp’s video tour

Do you find yourself keeping track of your projects using a mishmash of endless email threads, saved IM conversations, phonecalls, meetings, sticky notes, post-its, and scribblings on napkins and used envelopes? Struggling to recall time spent on a project after it’s done? Experiencing miscommunication with a client based on clashing expectations or surprises as to what work the client’s request actually entailed? These are just some of the obstacles that come up in the pursuit of an organized and smooth freelance ride.

Enter Basecamp, a web-based project-management application built by web design firm 37signals in response to the frustration of trying to keep everyone in the loop when working collaboratively. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal is throwing their hat into the user-generated content ring with the relaunch of their “creative leaders” ad campaign, a series of meta-interviews in the weekend “Pursuits” section that get advertising creatives to talk about advertising, to promote the sale of ad space in the WSJ, and specifically the weekend edition. Originally launched in 1975, the campaign has featured advertising industry heavies such as Jerry Della Femina and Phil Dusenberry. They have relaunched featuring advertising wunderkind Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky ( cpbgroup.com), the agency known for such ad campaigns as Coke Zero and Subservient Chicken, as well as their own line of gear, including trucker hats that say “ironic” on them. (more…)

Amid all the hype about Web 2.0 technologies and trends, many experts feel that human perception, the way we gather and process information, has literally been changed by use of the web, and web design must adapt by providing a more active user experience, more opportunity for user participation, even a shift of image-to-text proportion. Dr. Jakob Nielsen, known as the “guru of usability,” would be a dissenting voice in that mix.

A look at his own site, useit.com, is all that’s needed to see Dr. Nielsen’s design philosophy. He has long been a defender of the “content is king” philosophy, rejecting use of images or bells and whistles in favor of clean, content-focused design back in the original dot-com boom. Now Nielsen is speaking out again to stir the pot and assert that new trends such as social networking, user-generated content, and sites architected on user-participation still need to adhere to his principles of content-only design. (more…)

When you consider the decision of whether to be a freelance designer or take a full-time position at a firm or agency, freelance can seem to present plenty of freedoms alluring to the creative mind: the chance to make your own hours, select only the clients and projects that interest you, be your own boss, create your own office culture made up of no one but you.

However, what’s not immediately obvious is that as a freelancer, you have to become your own administrative assistant, accountant, human resources manager, and marketing coordinator. You’re involved in every aspect of running a business, which is a hefty task that has to be managed in an organized and disciplined fashion, or it can eat into your time designing, not to mention your creative mojo. It’s very hard to focus on the design work you love when you’re worried about lining up the next client, paying your medical expenses, or tracking down a flurry of disorganized receipts every annual quarter to file your taxes. (more…)

At a time when people love to proclaim (with varying degrees of sincerity) that advertising is dead, while the web assaults us with popups of dancing mortgage-rate ads, you may be looking for evidence that sophisticated, nuanced use of color, words, and image still rise above the pack. Uwe Stoklossa’s recently published book pays homage to classic and surprising techniques of visual persuasion. Stoklossa, a German graphic designer and copywriter, has gathered 500 print advertisements by agencies all over the world into one inspiring tome: “Advertising: New Techniques for Visual Seduction.” Stoklossa’s book illustrates how the most successful and memorable ads go about arresting the gaze of the viewer and earning that much sought-after double-take. The featured ads do this in a variety of ways: by upending our expectations, showing us something out of its usual context, or deceptive imagery that reveals itself, on a second glance, to be much more than what it first appeared…MORE

When you think of Bill Gates, the words “financially challenged” probably don’t come to mind. I mean, let’s face it; things have pretty much been going his way. That is certainly true of Microsoft, but his lesser-known corporation, Corbis, is finding it hard to turn a profit. A photo-licensing business Gates started in 1989, Corbis has spent millions building an archive of the most beloved and iconic images in existence (think Marilyn Monroe over the subway grates) which it licenses for about $250 a pop. In addition, Corbis keeps a staff of professional photographers who generate stock images for clients in marketing, media, and advertising sects. This accounts for half of Corbis’s $250 million a year in sales—an impressive number, but not a profitable one.

The trouble is, Corbis is meeting with unexpected competition from the “little guys,” micro-stock photo agency sites that rely on the crowdsourcing approach, empowering their member communities of amateur or semi-pro photographers to post and sell their work for populist prices…MORE

Weiden+Kennedy, the ad agency best known for its 20-year relationship with Nike, recently made waves through big ad agencies when Nike parted ways with them to seek an agency with more prowess in digital media. Now, under the direction of Joakim Borgstrom, hired to the newly created role of Interactive Creative Director, W+K Amsterdam have launched a rebuttal against Nike’s vote of no-confidence in their interactive media skills: Karashin.com, an online campaign promoting AE’s violence-embracing game Burnout Dominator. Karashin actually refers to a Tibetan principle of “inner peace through outer violence”—in other words, relax by playing a video game where you get to crash cars and make things blow up.

The Karashin site is an interactive experience that plays out at its own pace, to the point where you might wonder if it’s practicing a different Tibetan philosophy, say, silent meditation? It makes the user wait and wonder a bit and forces him to time his clicks, something of a nod to a gaming experience, but the eventual payoff lets the user engage in some inner peace through outer violence…
MORE

It seems the Ogilvy umbrella is determined to bring back basic html as a trend and inspire you to brush off your hand-coding skills. Last week we reported on Ogilvy North America’s attempt at reverse-credibilty through deliberately, dorkishly hand-coded web design. This time around, they offer up a much more visually impressive instance of it in their site for Levi’s Copper Jeans. Coming from OgilvyOne/Singapore, the approach here is different—the Levis’ Copper site actually announces itself as being an html-only site done to serve the “back to basics” aesthetic also espoused by this particular line of Levi’s jeans.

The site’s most noticeable nods to retro html coding are in the big grey navigation buttons, pulldown menus, and the use of large image “slices.” But you won’t find annoying gif animations or the early web’s inattention to flowing layout design. The Levi’s Copper site strikes me as a nice way of stepping back MORE

Digital designers, the tide keeps moving in your favor as clients spend more and more marketing dollars online. The effects can be seen from the startup boutique agencies to the biggest and oldest in the business. Most recently, Ogilvy North America has created a new position, Chief Digital Officer, and hired Jean-Philippe Maheu, formerly of Razorfish, to fill the role. This move by Ogilvy was sparked by increasing client demand for digital media branding and marketing techniques, which Ogilvy’s old-school expertise and approach could not fulfill.

MORE

Now that the web has been around for well over a decade, most professional sites, personal sites or blogs, and in general sites with any credibility at all have a ubiquitously polished look. But lately, possibly emerging out of the low-fi, user-generated-content aesthetic, is a trend in seeking reverse-credibility through deliberately, earnestly bad design. Take as evidence the site Ogilvy Canada designed to promote HoneyComb cereal. The site, beeboy.org, is ostensibly the property of Bee Researcher Barbara Sommerville, and records her research and observation of “Bernard,” a boy raised by bees.

Fake blogs and fake personal sites are now a well-worn trick in marketing attempts (Coke, for example?) but the striking thing about the design of beeboy.org is just how far it goes to make it look like it was done by a design-impaired bee scientist, rather than an ad agency.

MORE